In the recent past, it has become popular to use a modular design of components in electrical panel boxes. Such modular design is conducive to post and bus bar type support and electrical interconnection of components to provide a safer, lower cost and more reliable electrical panel that allows ready replacement, changes, removal and addition of components. This type of design does away with or substantially reduces the use of flexible wiring, and the design gains much of its advantage by reason of this. The post and bus bar type interconnection of components in panel boxes, however, generally relates only to primary circuitry for the electrical components, but yet various secondary sensory and annunciating circuitry is common or necessary in such boxes for practical utility to determine and make known their operational states and happenings.
The post and bus bar type architecture is more useful and practical in electrical networks having fewer electrical communications and especially in such networks where several of the electrical communications are of a common nature. Such architecture is not well adapted to electrical networks having a larger numbers of individual electrical interconnections that are not of a common nature such as normally exist in sensing and annunciating circuits. Responsively in the past, sensing and annunciating systems commonly have been wired with flexible insulated wiring, even in electrical systems using post and bus bar-type architecture for primary circuitry.
The instant invention deals with this problem by providing sensing circuits associated with various individual components of an electrical panel box that communicate with one or more annunciating circuits at a distance therefrom by audio linkage that does not require wiring or other linking hardware between the two circuits. Such a system allows the use of the post and bus bar architecture for primary electrical circuits and does away with the necessity of flexible wiring for sensing and annunciating circuitry carried in panel boxes, but yet allows dealing with sensing and annunciating functions in substantially the same fashion as if flexible wiring were used.
Sound has been used to transmit various information at least as long as speech has existed and its use to couple various electrical systems, or various parts of a single electrical system, also has heretofore become known. Sound waves and especially the so called "ultrasonic waves," having frequencies above the limits of human hearing or in excess of about twenty kilocycles per second, have been used in connection with electronic circuitry in various types of alarm devices, door opening and unlocking devices, switching devices, and other similar devices. It is not known, however, that sonic coupling has been used to eliminate wiring in electrical panel boxes, especially in sensing and annunciating circuitry.
The instant invention is particularly applicable to electric panel boxes having plural modular elements interconnected in spaced stacked arrays by bus bar and post-type architecture. The bus bar and post architecture provides stable supporting and electrical interconnection of elements, but uses posts and bars that normally do not have surface insulation. Because of this, the use of flexible insulated wiring in such boxes not only is physically difficult by reason of the presence of bus bars and posts, but also is more dangerous because of the hazard of the secondary wiring's insulation becoming corrupted by means of normally present mechanical, thermal, and electrical forces that may cause shorting to the bus bars and posts. These hazards become enhanced in surge protectors with spaced stacked arrays of modular elements because of the generally hostile electrical environments in which these elements often exist and the sensitive nature of the electronic components that they contain and protect. The instant invention is particularly designed for use in such applications, especially at remote locations where access may be difficult. My invention resides not in any one of these particular features, but rather in the synergistic combination of all of its structures that gives rise to the functions necessarily flowing therefrom as specified and claimed.